Week 7 Fantasy Projection Corrections

Jake ODonnell 12:29 pm, October 25th, 2015

Nobody likes talking about kickers and defense. They are never the sexy flex pick-ups, they never are helped thanks to a major injury, and most of all they are completely and utterly random. Hell, our own Nando Di Fino and Tony Cincotta used to just pick their kickers weekly using ping-pong balls in an NBA style lottery. When the experts are using a lottery to decide their kickers, which should be enough to make the average player realize it’s not worth worrying about. I have always been a proponent of eliminating kickers because of this randomness. Fantasy football will always have a luck factor involved. Let’s eliminate some of that luck by eliminating the kicker.

When special teams are not counted in the team defense scoring, defenses are pretty much the same. There’s no point in spending a high draft pick on a team like Seattle because they just might not be that good. I prefer to play matchups, going with a defense playing a weak team out there on the waiver wire. If I get hot, then awesome. It’s definitely a ton of hit and miss, but hopefully somehow you get a pick six or luck into picking up a Broncos defense, which looks awesome.

When you lose a matchup based on a kicker or a defense going off, it’s frustrating. You win the positional battle, but then lose based on luck. When you lose, as I did this past week, due to my kicker getting an extra point blocked (-2) by my opponent’s defense (+2), causing them to not enter a particular point range (+1), then frustration turns to anger. There was no pick six or Cairo Santos SEVEN field goal game here. It was all luck and I lost because Jamie Collins can jump really really high.

The randomness reminds me of projections. They are computer generated numbers that are based on well-crafted formulas, but really don’t mean much. At least that’s what I thought when I started tracking. Let’s see how the projections looked for week six.

LAST WEEK’S NFL.COM PROJECTIONS

LeGarrette Blount (11.20 points, Over) – This time, history repeated itself. We knew how good historically Blount has been against the Colts. Blount legitimately makes a living off of facing Indianapolis and despite not being the starter, Blount still performed like one. Blount rushed for a season high 93 yards while scoring a rushing touchdown. He also wound up with his first receiving touchdown of his career, proving that he is absolutely impossible to stop by the city of Indianapolis. It didn’t hurt that Dion Lewis had his worse game of the season, coming into this one a bit banged up.

Antonio Brown (16.10 points, Under) – If only Martavis Bryant’s name was Antonio Brown. We completely nailed this one, as once again with Michael Vick at the helm, AB was deemed useless. Catching just three of his eight targets for 24 yards. Brown is begging for Ben Roethlisberger to get back ASAP. The bright side for Brown is that Vick is no longer the starting quarterback though. That job now belongs to Landry Jones, who was much more successful throwing the football. Of course almost all of his passes went to his first read, Bryant, which once again solidifies my theory that backups throw to backups because they are comfortable with them. Brown is most definitely not a backup, which means he desperately needs Big Ben back.

Travis Benjamin (11.70 points, Under) – We said last week that it’s harder and harder to be a nonbeliever in Benjamin. Yet, there we were last week saying NOT JUST YET. Forget the elite Denver defense; Travis Benjamin once again did his thing. He was targeted 13 times by Josh McCown, catching nine of those passes for 117 yards. Benjamin is McCown’s first read on every single play and he has officially broken out of his strictly deep threat role. Benjamin has become both a complete and reliable receiver for the Browns and your fantasy team. We don’t need to be proven anything anymore.

Jamison Crowder (5.40 points, Over) – With DeSean Jackson and Jordan Reed both out again, we used the logic that Kirk Cousins was going to have to throw to someone consistently, assuming Pierre Garcon was stuck on Revis Island. Naturally, we didn’t predict that Cousins would throw to wrong team more often than not. Garcon is the wide receiver that caught the touchdown, Chris Thompson continued to shine in his running back safety valve role, and Crowder finished with just four catches for 40 yards. Disappointing to get this one wrong, because the idea just seemed so right.

Ladarius Green (10.00 points, Under) – Here’s another example where we were right about the logic, just wrong on the execution. Since Antonio Gates returned from his suspension, Green has definitely been a much smaller part of the offense. In a game where Philip Rivers threw the ball an ABSURD 65 times, Antonio Gates was targeted 16 times compared to Ladarius Green’s four. Gates finished with nine catches for 95 yards, while Green finished with just three catches for 35 yards. The thing we didn’t account for? The notion that Green would catch a touchdown and thus putting his point total right around 10 for the week. I still believe Green isn’t going to be reliable option; although I really do like him a ton this week against Oakland.

Another week in the books, another disappointing finish for us. After getting the first two players right, we were sunk by the next three, making our seasonal record fall to 9-14. We are going to need a perfect week to get back to .500. In need of perfection, we look to Fox Sports.